Carbon Footprint Scam! Algore’s a Hypocrite Who Uses Tons of Energy in His Twenty-Room Mansion; This is a False RELIGION, America, Not Science

Feb 27, 2007

RUSH: Yes, we’re going to get to the Algore business with his house and so forth. Be patient. There’s a lot of stuff in the Algore stack today, some audio sound bites. The Drive-Bys are going nuts wanting him to run for president.

The Hillary camp is keeping an eye on his weight. As long as he stays heavy, they don’t think he’s going to run for president. If he starts losing weight real fast, then they think he’s going to get in the race. Because you don’t run for president when you’re overweight. You just don’t do it. Like Obama has to quit smoking. There’s a poll out. People don’t like old guys like McCain, they don’t like smokers like Obama, and they don’t like Mormons like Romney. The Washington Post has this poll (laughing). So the Hillary camp says they’re watching Gore’s girth, and if he sheds some pounds they’re going to get convinced here that he’s going to enter the presidential sweepstakes.

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RUSH: Warning: this whole next segment or two is going to be one giant See, I Told You So, ladies and gentlemen. It’s great to have you back. Rush Limbaugh, the bulwark of American conservatism. When anybody wants to know what the conservative view of any issue is, they call here. All roads lead to me. Rush Limbaugh and the EIB Network — way to nod in agreement in there, Brian. Even Brian understands that. All roads lead to me. The telephone number is 800-282-2882, if you want to be on the program today. The e-mail address is Rush@eibnet.com.

Dadelut dadelut dadelut dadelut dadelut dadelut. Here’s Paul Shanklin as Algore, ladies and gentlemen. (Playing Ball of Fire song.) The EIB Network and the Rush Limbaugh program. The climate crisis global warming update here. (Continued playing of song.) That’s our old buddy Paul Shanklin as Algore, and it’s riffing off of Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire, one of three global warming update and climate crisis updates that we have in rotation. By now, most of you have to have heard about the release from the Tennessee Policy Center — and the Gore camp is not denying any of the numbers here, because they can’t. These are from the power companies, and this is apparently public information. We know it is because this kind of data has been released about the amount of water, for example, and other utilities that Bill Gates uses in his house in Seattle. This is apparently public knowledge.

The bottom line here is from the Tennessee Public Policy Center, Algore ‘uses more electricity in his mansion outside Nashville than 20 average homes combined for a year. His twenty-room, eight bathroom mansion, located in the Belle Meade area of Nashville, consumes more electricity every month than the average American household uses in an entire year, according to the Nashville Electric Service. The average household in America consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours per year, according to the Department of Energy. In 2006, Gore devoured nearly 221,000 kilowatt-hours.’ That’s more than 20 times the national average, and last August alone… You heard about this, Dawn? This is virgin news to you? Oh! ‘Last August alone, Algore burned through 22,619 kilowatt-hours, more than twice the electricity in one month than an average American family uses in an entire year.’

Now… ‘As a result of his energy consumption, the average monthly electric bill at Gore’s house topped $1,359.’ That’s the average monthly. That strikes me, given the size of Algore’s house and the amount of electricity he’s using, as not that much. ‘Since the release of his’ bogus documentary that’s really a propaganda piece, ‘Gore’s energy consumption has increased. His consumption of electricity has increased from an average of 16,200 kilowatt-hours per month in 2005 to 18,400 kilowatt-hours per month in 2006. It doesn’t stop at the electric bill. The natural gas bills for his mansion and the guest house averaged a $1,080 per month.’ So the combined utility bill is over two grand, actually about $2400 a month. In fact, the pool house on Algore’s property, the pool is heated by gas, and the whole thing…. His pool house uses more natural gas, kilowatt-hours or however it’s measured, uses more of that than he does electricity in his pool house. Of course Gore’s on the defensive now. The Drive-Bys are on the defensive for him; he’s on the defensive about this.

They’re out there explaining, ‘Well, he does things in a number of different ways the reduce size of his carbon footprint.&rdquo; Now, this is key. I want you to follow me on this. This carbon footprint business is one of the biggest scams that has come down the pike in a long while. There’s an ABC story out of Nashville: &ldquo;Back home in Tennessee, safely ensconced in his suburban Nashville home, Vice President Al Gore is no doubt basking in the Oscar awarded to ‘An Inconvenient Truth,’ the documentary he inspired and in which he starred. But a local free-market think tank is trying to make that very home emblematic of what it deems Gore’s environmental hypocrisy. Armed with Gore’s utility bills for the last two years, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research charged,&rdquo; all this information that I just shared with you. &ldquo;The Center’s 27-year-old president, Drew Johnson. ‘If this were any other person with $30,000-a-year in utility bills, I wouldn’t care. But he tells other people how to live and he’s not following his own rules.’ A former Gore adviser scoffed in response: ‘I think what you’re seeing here is the last gasp of the global warming skeptics. They’ve completely lost the debate on the issue so now they’re just attacking their most effective opponent.’&rdquo; Lost the debate on the issue? This is absurd.

This is a simple news story that highlights a little hypocrisy here. &ldquo;Kalee Kreider, a spokesperson for the Gores, did not dispute the Center’s figures, taken as they were from public records. But she pointed out that both Al and Tipper Gore work out of their home and she argued that ‘the bottom line is that every family has a different carbon footprint. And what Vice President Gore has asked is for families to calculate that footprint and take steps to reduce and offset it.’&rdquo; Now, what is a carbon footprint? If you don’t know, I will tell you. &ldquo;A carbon footprint is a calculation of the CO2 fossil fuel emissions each person is responsible for, either directly because of his or her transportation and energy consumption or indirectly because of the manufacture and eventual breakdown of products he or she uses. (You can calculate your own carbon footprint on the website http://www.carbonfootprint.com),&rdquo; if you care to do this.

‘The vice president has done that, Kreider argues, and the family tries to offset that carbon footprint by purchasing their power through the local Green Power Switch program – electricity generated through renewable resources such as solar, wind, and methane gas, which create less waste and pollution. ‘In addition, they are in the midst of installing solar panels on their home, which will enable them to use less power,’ Kreider added. ‘They also use compact fluorescent bulbs and other energy efficiency measures and then they purchase offsets for their carbon emissions to bring their carbon footprint down to zero.’&rdquo; Purchase offsets? In order for this whole line of thinking to work, you have your carbon footprint — and this whole thing is bogus because the vast majority of CO2 is put in the air by vegetation and the ocean and any number of natural — 4% of it is due to human use.

Anyway, you calculate your carbon footprint, and if it’s larger than what it should be, then you go buy permission from others who are not using all of their carbon footprint. So you can trade carbon subsidies. So the bottom line is Algore is paying for it. He’s going out and paying, but he’s not reducing. He is using other people’s unused carbon footprint, other businesses’ unused carbon footprint. This is a commodity. Well, you pay the company or the person that’s not using the full-fledge of their carbon footprint. It’s not the first time this kind of thing has been used. The pollution credits. Before the whole notion of a carbon footprint came around, you could do this in pollution. Corporations traded pollution benefits. If a corporation was polluting more than it was allowed, it could go buy permission to do that from a person or company that was not polluting as much as it was allowed to. The bottom line is, it doesn’t reduce anything.

If Algore were serious about this, he would reduce the carbon footprint. He would not go out and buy other people’s unused carbon footprints. How ridiculous does all this sound? But that’s the excuse, and that’s what he’s using. Then there’s this: &ldquo;Kreider says she’s confident that the Gores’ utility bills will decrease. ‘They bought an older home and they’re in the process of upgrading the home,’ she said. ‘Unfortunately that means an increase in energy use in order to have an overall decrease in energy use down the road.’&rdquo; So they’re remodeling and the remodeling costs cause a lot of energy to be used but that’s going to lead to less energy being used in the process. Now, my personal take on this is, if he wants to buy the energy that he wants to buy, I’ve got no quarrel with it. One of the things that really bothers me about all of this is that the underlying subtext on all of this is that we must reduce our lifestyles in the United States, and that’s why Gore is being called a hypocrite, because he’s not doing that. But everybody else is supposed to.

During the singing of Gore’s song that accompanied the movie at the Oscars on Sunday night, Melissa Etheridge was up there warbling away with one of the most depressing songs nominated all night, and they’ve got this stupid stuff in the background on this giant screen: ‘Take mass transit as often as you can’ and light rail as often as you can. ‘Calculate your carbon footprint,’ all this sort of stuff. The whole point here is to downsize the American lifestyle, to blame America for all of these so-called climate crises, problems, global warming or what have you. The hypocrisy here is that Gore is not doing that. He’s not reducing his footprint. He’s making excuses for having a large one. Everybody else is supposed to reduce theirs. The bottom line here of all of this is that the ultimate aim of the global warming religion followers is to make sure that the United States gets the bulk of the blame, and the fix for this is going to be you and I surrendering more of our liberty and our freedom and paying larger taxes to ‘fix’ this disaster that we have supposedly caused, and empowering an ever larger and larger government to make regulations over how we can live.

The reason Gore is in trouble on this is because he’s not reducing his carbon footprint. He’s going out and using his wealth and buying other people’s unused footprint to allow him to have this big gigantic one. I have no problem if he wants to build a mansion that large — and he wants to pay for the electricity and the gas to run it, fine! I have no problem with it. You have a big house; you want to use energy to heat it and cool it, and you buy it and you pay for it. I have no problem, because it’s not destroying the planet. Algore’s perfectly fine doing all of that on his own, but his plan involves you reducing your consumption because you and the mass of the population in this country are responsible for the ‘crisis’ that we face in the climate.

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RUSH: One other thing here about this Algore business and his home and his carbon footprint and all that. Here’s the thing that you have to understand about this. Al Gore is rich, and that is wonderful, and because he’s rich, and because he has the resources, he has the right to go out and buy a mansion and use as much electricity and natural gas as he wants. As long as he pays the bills, fine and dandy. He doesn’t reduce his carbon footprint. He goes out and buys carbon credits from others who are not using theirs. But the problem is he doesn’t want this opportunity for everybody else, and that is what the global warming climate crisis BS is all about. Al Gore and his ilk do not want everyone to share in the wealth of this world. Only a select few elitists will be allowed to do this. In Algore’s perfect world: No! You? You’re not supposed to go out and buy somebody else’s unused carbon credits. You’re to downsize. You’re to get rid of your car and get on light rail and mass transit as often as you can. Algore is not going to do that. &ldquo;Well, Rush, he can’t do that. The Secret Service won’t let him.&ldquo; Don’t give me this. Leaders do what they suggest everybody else does — and they’ve done it before they become leaders, which is why they become leaders.

George Patton was in the infantry. George Patton didn’t just start out as a general and orchestrate things from behind the lines. There are any number of examples like this. The thing that you’ve gotta take away from this is that it’s perfectly okay for Algore. He’s paying for it. He’s paying for it, and he’s even buying some carbon credits. Why, there’s nothing wrong. He’s modernizing his house, putting in solar panels. You are not to be afforded this opportunity. You are not to share in the wealth of the world. You are to blame, ladies and gentlemen, for the climate crisis. You’re to blame for the polar bears’ eventual extinction. You’re to blame for the Greenland ice shelf melting and flooding Manhattan. You are to blame for all of this, and if you doubt me in how successful this has been, there’s a magazine called Frontline. It’s the national magazine of India, and it’s from the publishers of The Hindu. The cover story is entitled, ‘Dangerous Denial — If all the people of the world had the same living style as the average American, the holocaust would have already visited us.&rdquo; This is in India.

”I’ll tell you one thing I’m not going to do is, I’m not going to let the United States carry the burden for cleaning up the world’s air, like the Kyoto Treaty would have done. China and India were exempted from that treaty.’ So said the then presidential hopeful, George W. Bush, in October 2000, to Al Gore, in a televised debate. Al Gore could have responded, ‘I am sure you would be happy to let the United States carry the responsibility for polluting the world’s air the most.’ He did not, being the other presidential hopeful. After all, Al Gore, who only three years earlier represented the U.S. in the Kyoto discussions and had authored a book on global warming, could not have been unaware of what Andrew Kerr of the World Wide Fund for Nature pointed out: ‘The United States is responsible for almost half of the increase in world carbon dioxide in the past decade. That increase is greater than the increase in China, India, Africa and the whole of Latin America.’&rdquo;

So even now in the national magazine of India, called Frontline, they’ve picked up the riff. It’s our fault. We are destroying the planet. ‘If all the people of the world had the same living style as the average American, the holocaust would have already visited us.’ Well, what do you do infer from that? You infer that we cannot continue to have and promote and expand and export the American lifestyle! We must get poorer, and only by being poor and more controlled by government will we save the earth from this climate crisis. Trust me on this, folks. You are being scammed like never before.

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RUSH: America’s Truth Detector. Doctor of Democracy. America’s Anchorman. I want to read to you a story from the 2001 Chicago Tribune. I don’t know the specific date, but it was 2001. It’s a piece by Rob Sullivan.

‘The 4,000-square-foot house is a model of environmental rectitude. Geothermal heat pumps located in a central closet circulate water through pipes buried 300 feet deep in the ground where the temperature is a constant 67 degrees; the water heats the house in the winter and cools it in the summer. Systems such as the one in this ‘eco-friendly’ dwelling use about 25% of the electricity that traditional heating and cooling systems utilize. A 25,000-gallon underground cistern collects rainwater gathered from roof runs; wastewater from sinks, toilets and showers goes into underground purifying tanks and is also funneled into the cistern. The water from the cistern is used to irrigate the landscaping surrounding the four-bedroom home. Plants and flowers native to the high prairie area blend the structure into the surrounding ecosystem. No, this is not the home of some eccentrically wealthy eco-freak trying to shame his fellow citizens into following the pristineness of his self-righteous example. And no, it is not the wilderness retreat of the Sierra Club or the Natural Resources Defense Council, a haven where tree-huggers plot political strategy. This is President George W. Bush’s ‘Texas White House’ outside the small town of Crawford.&rdquo; It uses about 25% of the electricity that traditional heating and cooling systems utilize.

Now, compare Gore’s mansion and Bush’s modest 4,000 square foot little house on a ranch in Crawford. Who is it that is actually walking the walk here when it comes to conserving energy? It is not Algore, ladies and gentlemen, and it isn’t going to be Algore — and, by the way, the fact that President Bush’s home was ecologically friendly was not unknown to the media. This was the Chicago Tribune in 2001. They just chose to ignore it while they heaped praise on Algore — and, by the way, Bush built this house with this system long before any of the current hysteria began on any of this. In due course we are going to find that George W. Bush has much more authenticity and realism than Algore or Bill or Hillary down the line when history is written. Barely have we scratched, however, the entire Global Warming Stack.

This is from a website called The Age.com.au. This is from Australia. &ldquo;Hard core global warming skeptics will descend on Canberra today for the release of a book claiming environmentalism is a new religion.&rdquo; Where have you people heard this before? You have heard it right here. All roads lead to EIB. Dean, I want you to repost that brilliant monologue I did on the fact that the global warming movement is simply a religion. Go find it from the archives. I want you to put it on the free side today so everybody can see this. &ldquo;Former mining executive Arvi Parbo will launch Ray Evans’ new publication, Nine Facts About Climate Change, at a function at Parliament House. The book claims climate change is nothing new and declares Howard Government investments in solar power and in cleaning up coal a &lsquo;complete waste of taxpayers’ money.’ &lsquo;Environmentalism has largely superseded Christianity as the religion of the upper classes in Europe and to a lesser extent in the United States,’ Mr Evans says in the publication.&rdquo; Yes. As G. K. Chesterton said, &ldquo;If you don’t believe in God, you will believe in anything.&rdquo;

&ldquo;’It is a form of religious belief which fosters a sense of moral superiority in the believer, but which places no importance on telling the truth,’ he says. &lsquo;The global warming scam has been, arguably, the most extraordinary example of scientific fraud in the postwar period.’ The function is organised by the Lavoisier Group, founded in 2000 by Ray Evans and former mining executive Hugh Morgan to test claims that global warming is the result of human activity.&rdquo; In fact, there’s an interesting quote here. &ldquo;In an interview with The Age last month, Mr Evans acknowledged that last September’s visit by former US vice-president Al Gore to promote his Oscar-winning global-warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth had helped generate a lot of publicity on climate change. But he described Mr Gore’s film as &lsquo;bullshit from beginning to end.’ ‘The science from the anthropology point of view has collapsed. The carbon-dioxide link is increasingly recognised as irrelevant,’ Mr Evans said. &lsquo;But the Government’s frightened. Cabinet, from what I understand, is by and large still sceptical of climate change, but it is scared of the drought and worried about how Labor will make use of it.’&rdquo;

Another story from our Global Warming Stack today, ladies and gentlemen. It’s a republication of the story from the UK: ‘Children Losing Sleep Over Global Warming — Half of children between the ages of seven and 11 are anxious about the effects of global warming and often lose sleep over it. The most feared consequences of global warming included poor health, the possibility of entire countries being submerged and the welfare of animals. A survey of 1150 youngsters found that 52% of them blamed politicians for the problems of climate change. One in seven said their own parents were not doing enough to improve the environment.&rdquo; The kids go to bed every night scared and frightened that the animals will die.

Now, the reason I bring this up again is because I remember telling you people numerous times way back in the late eighties and the early nineties — before the Berlin Wall came down and a number of other things were happening and the Soviet threat was still real — I can remember turning on Phil Donahue. I’ll never forget this. This happened a number of times, turning on Phil Donahue’s show. One day Laura Dern was on. She was 18 years old I think at the time, 18 or 19. A Hollywood starlet. She broke down in tears on the Donahue show, and tried to describe to Donahue and the audience the literal fear of waking up every day, realizing that that could be the last day for everybody on earth because of the threat of nuclear detonation as Ronald Reagan was recently in the White House — and of course the Soviets had their arsenal as well.

We went through this. You remember the 1980s, and all the hue and cry from the Drive-Bys in Hollywood about how sick and terrified the children of American were because they were so afraid Reagan was going to blow us all up because he was a cowboy with his finger on the nuclear trigger. There was that made-for-TV movie about a nuclear strike on Kansas City. (I was living there then.) They even had an episode on the hospital drama St. Elsewhere about a child so afraid of dying in a nuclear attack that he hid in a stairwell and almost died. All of that fearmongering done by the liberals and Democrats and Drive-Bys stemmed from their hatred of Ronald Reagan. After making our children sick with fear, those people said it was all Reagan’s fault! Well, guess who it is simply recycling an issue?

Liberalism is liberalism. It has techniques and tactics. It has an old playbook. There’s nothing new in it. There must always be a crisis. There must always be a crisis which is going to destroy all of humanity. This crisis must be laid at the feet of the United States of America and its people. The cause of this crisis is always America’s fault. It is an attempt to spread as much guilt throughout the population as possible. Today, it is spread beyond these shores. Now children in Europe scared, frightened, and going to bed every night because the animals are going to die. With Algore leading the charge, the same people who were hysterical about nuclear bombs going boom, boom in the night, are now spreading their poisonous fear among children over global warming! It’s the same result: the end of the planet, the end of life as we know it. The only thing different is how it’s going to happen. Now it’s not nukes. Now it’s manmade (primarily American manmade) global warming.

Now, what makes this so sad is that instead of being ashamed of themselves for failing to protect these kids, these people will be proud that they have terrified school children. They’ll look at this as a sign of success. They will say that the fear and the cynicism of the American youth will launch these liberals to ever more power. It is just so bogus, and it is just classic. It is right out of the liberal playbook. The elements are identical. It’s just the means by which we are all ‘destroying ourselves’ that is different. Of course, one other big difference. They’ve learned from the nuclear attempt. The nukes could wipe us out in a day. It was easy to gin up fear about that. Since 1984, they have been talking about global warming wiping out the planet. They’ve been saying, ‘Give us 20 years. We need 20, 25 years! We can’t wait! We gotta get started.’ It’s been 20, 25 years and it isn’t happening, and it’s not even anywhere near close to happening.

So now they’re revising.

Global warming will go on a thousand years. Global warming will go on for 30 years, 50, whatever. So it’s way, way, way down the road. It is not something that’s going to wipe us out tomorrow or overnight, so we have all of this time to let liberals have all of this power to take away as much of our liberty and freedom — and technological advancement and increases in the way of life in this country — as possible. So they’ve modified the technique a bit so as to give themselves more time. In other words, the nuclear threat was wiped out when the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviets went down the tubes. Now the nuclear threat is basically part of the war on terror, and the libs don’t think there is one. So they can’t acknowledge the nuclear threat there.

How honest is that? How consistent is that? A nuke is a nuke, and a nuke in the hands of a bunch of terrorists who will willingly die themselves to use one is far more dangerous than the situation that existed in the eighties when Reagan was president. But they ignore the nuke threat today because to ignore it is something we must do. To acknowledge it is to acknowledge we have a dire threat in the form of terrorism. So now global warming has replaced the nuke threat and all of the ingredients necessary to frighten children — and these people are happy to do so, are present.

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RUSH: This is Linda in Mount Laurel, New Jersey. I appreciate your call. Welcome.

CALLER: Rush, teacher of the deaf dittos.

RUSH: Well, thank you.

CALLER: How are you?

RUSH: I’m fine. Thank you.

CALLER: Good. Listen, the first that I’m hearing of this whole carbon offset thing is with Algore justifying his overconsumption, and I’m just wondering —

RUSH: Wait, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa — one thing I want to try to — I think all this is bogus. I don’t think there’s anything such as overconsumption if you pay for it. You know, don’t fall prey to this.

CALLER: No, I agree with you. I agree with you, but I think that if I was consuming what he consumes, he would tell me I was overconsuming.

RUSH: Oh, no question. He’s telling everybody they’re overconsuming.

CALLER: Exactly. So I’m speaking, trying to understand his thought process, which ain’t easy. But I’m saying that if this carbon offset thing was legit, wouldn’t the mantra all these years have been, &ldquo;Buy carbon offsets! Buy carbon offsets! Everyone should be buying carbon offsets&rdquo;? But that hasn’t been the case. You know, it hasn’t been. It’s been ‘reduce your consumption.’

RUSH: No.

CALLER: But now that Algore’s consumption is brought out into the light, well, he has a justification. Because he’s buying carbon offsets, he’s okay. But how come they’re not telling us to buy carbon offsets?

RUSH: Well, you got a have the money to buy carbon offsets. That’s the thing — and he doesn’t want you to be able to do that because he doesn’t want to spread the wealth. You know, it’s fine if you can go out and buy a carbon offset, but you still have to have the money to be able to do it. It’s being lauded as some great natural thing and wonderful thing, but the whole thing is based on the fact that each of us have a maximum amount of carbon we can put in the atmosphere and if we exceed that we’re going to destroy the planet. There’s no evidence of this. This is as bogus as it can be.

I got into an argument with my good friend, The Economist, Professor Hazlett, when the whole notion of pollution credits came up. He thought it was a good idea because — and, by the way, limiting pollution is a fine thing. I’m not opposed to it. I just don’t think that limiting pollution should be tied to saving the planet. It’s good stewardship, and that’s fine and dandy, but don’t connect it to a crisis. Now, the whole pollution credit business started basically with corporations, which were deemed to be the big polluters. We’ve had federal regulations on the amount of pollution that can come out of a smokestack over time, and the EPA with all of these various rules, and for some companies it was cumbersome and impossible to downsize that much. So they went out and they bought pollution credits from other companies that were not polluting as much. The idea was that this kept the level of pollution the same, and hopefully would reduce it some.

Now the whole thing’s come up here with carbon offsets. But you think back. I don’t know how many people are going to remember this. The first tax outside of the retroactivity of the income tax increase that Clinton proposed in 1993 was what? A carbon tax. It was a tax on the amount of carbon you used in gasoline, any form of energy — and it was big. It was like 50 cents beyond what the current level was. It was going to be huge. It didn’t go anywhere at the time because it was thought to be unnecessary, too much, damaging to the economy, and so forth. The reason you haven’t heard about carbon credits or carbon offsets a lot lately is because it’s just now ginning up.

I have this story in the stack. I wasn’t going to use it because I thought I’d overdone the whole notion, but look, this is in Page Six today, a gossip column in the New York Post. ‘Hollywood’s wealthy liberals can now avoid any guilt they might feel for consuming so much nonrenewable fossil fuel in their private jets, SUVs, and multiple air-conditioned mansions. This year’s Oscar goodie bag contained gift certificates representing 100,000 pounds of greenhouse gas reductions from TerraPass, which describes itself as a ‘carbon offset retailer.’ The 100,000 pounds ‘are enough to balance out an average year in the life of an Academy Award presenter,’ a press release from TerraPass asserts. ‘For example, 100,000 pounds is the total amount of carbon dioxide created by 20,000 miles of driving, 40,000 miles on commercial airlines, 20 hours in a private jet and a large house in Los Angeles.&rdquo;

So Hollywood people were given gift certificates worth 100,000 pounds of greenhouse gas credits or reductions in their goodie bags at the Oscars.

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RUSH: I just had to deal with a sad, disgruntled employee during the break. Mr. Snerdley was complaining to me that when I go into my global warming riff, that the calls that come in are useless. ‘Not that the calls are bad; it’s just that all they’re doing is telling their own stories, and they’re being anecdotal, and they’re not saying anything other than what you’re saying.’ I said, &ldquo;Don’t worry about it, Mr. Snerdley. Global warming is one of these topics: when I say something on it, there is nothing left to be said,&rdquo; especially, as in the last hour, spent the bulk of the hour, 45 minutes, on the subject. Mr. Snerdley was worried that he couldn’t find any decent calls to discuss all of this. I don’t expect calls on it. What can there be to say after I’ve said what I’ve said? We don’t want to take calls from people who say, &ldquo;Yeah, Rush, you’re right.&rdquo; It would be nice if somebody called and said, ‘Man, I never looked at it that way before.&rdquo; But the one thing that Snerdley pointed out that’s true is: talk about the war, and we have all kinds of libs calling in here. Talk about taxes, and we get all kinds of libs calling here. Talk about global warming, we don’t get any libs. They don’t call to dispute this. They don’t call to disagree.

But, look, I have long said, ladies and gentlemen, that when I have said something about something, there’s really nothing left to be said — which is why sometimes I hold back, allowing you the opportunity to say something. Because I know how it is: a very thorough discussion. That’s why we have Open Line Friday, folks. I told Mr. Snerdley, ‘I have taken this on now. I have a goal. I’m going to beat back this whole global warming notion in this country.’ It’s a scam from the get-go. It’s a repeat of several other tried and true liberal techniques over the years to instill fear and guilt in people that will make them accept higher taxes, bigger government, and a roll-back of American lifestyles.

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RUSH: Folks, get this. You all remember Max Mayfield, right? He ran the hurricane center. He retired on January 1st. He’s now under investigation by his former employer for possibly violating fishing laws. That would be the US government is investigating Max Mayfield. Here’s what happened. &ldquo;Mayfield caught a 200-pound Goliath grouper while fishing with friends in the Gulf of Mexico a few days after his retirement Jan.1. The boat captain and crew slid the grouper into the boat through a door in the back, unhooked it, snapped a few celebratory photos and slid it back into the water. It swam away.&rdquo;

Sounds fine, doesn’t it? Oh, no. No!

&ldquo;Such photographs are common fare in fishing magazines, but since Goliath is a protected species, bringing one into the boat is illegal, even if just for a few minutes. Doing so can damage a protective slime that covers the fish. Mayfield, 58, said Monday that he had no idea he had done anything wrong until newspapers published a photo of the catch and someone complained to the National Marine Fisheries Service, a branch of the National Oceanic &amp; Atmospheric Administration, which also oversees the National Hurricane Center. &lsquo;I love to fish, but I haven’t done any in a long time. I don’t know the rules,’ Mayfield said. ‘Nobody on that boat knew the rules.’ Tracey Dunn, who oversees federal fishing enforcement in Florida, would not discuss specifics of Maxwell’s grouper because it is under review by the fisheries service’s general counsel. Sanctions can range from a written reprimand to a civil fine,&rdquo; for bringing a grouper into your boat. Poor Max. He was working hard all those years trying to warn people that wouldn’t listen to him about approaching hurricanes. He catches this big fish, brings it aboard for photos, and now he’s under investigation.

By the way, Governor Schwarzenegger is going to put his jet on a global warming registry. They got a picture of his jet here. It’s a GIII. I assume it’s Schwarzenegger’s. It’s black and red with the Batman logo painted on the side. Here’s the plan. &ldquo;Schwarzenegger now has another plan: offset the pollution created by his private jet travel. Spokesman Aaron McLear said the governor is developing a program that would calculate his carbon emissions from Jan. 1, 2007, forward. Cal-EPA confirmed they are looking at putting the governor’s travel on the California Climate Action Registry, which would offset his carbon emissions by planting or protecting trees and other efforts.&rdquo;

Now, the carbon footprint for this jet is 8,700 pounds of carbon dioxide for just a one hour flight from Santa Monica to Sacramento. They’re going to calculate the carbon footprint every time Schwarzenegger flies and they’re going to go out and offset this. This is absurd. To offset this they’re going to plant some trees, or they’re going to make sure some existing trees don’t get cut down. That’s a real penalty for Schwarzenegger, right? Here are five western governors saying, &ldquo;To hell with the federal government on this. We’re moving forward with global warming. We can’t deal with this anymore. We can’t wait for the destruction. We gotta try what we can do to stop it.&rdquo;

Now, how easy is this? You don’t reduce what you fly. You don’t reduce how often you fly. You just calculate how many tons of pollution you’re putting up in there and make sure some trees are planted to deal with it. Folks, don’t fall for this. We’ve been flying airplanes and jets in the world for — this is driving me nuts. I’m going to have to work hard to maintain my sanity on this, because this is just over-the-top absurd. One more thing. This stuff just keeps rolling in. &ldquo;Prince Charles today said that banning McDonald’s fast food was the key to a healthy lifestyle. His comments came as he attended the launch of a public health awareness campaign. He asked a nutritionist at the Imperial College London diabetes center, &lsquo;Have you got anywhere with McDonald’s? Have you tried getting it banned? That’s the key.’ Royal observers said that Charles would have been aware that his comments would be picked up by the media. &lsquo;He new there was a reporter there. This is a subject close to his heart,’&rdquo; banning McDonald’s — and they’re going after Max Mayfield for bringing a grouper aboard a boat for some photos!

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RUSH: I mentioned earlier that the Drive-By Media was having quasi-orgasms over the possibility that Algore would seek the presidency following his big night at the Epidemic Awards. We have a little montage from last night and this morning of news anchors and reporters from ABC, NBC, CBS. Here’s how it sounded.

Charlie Gibson: Al Gore won an Oscar. So does he want now to win something else?

Meredith Vieira: Gore is definitely the coolest guy in the room.

Bill Weir: A bigger, looser Al Gore now roams red carpets and he’s up for the Nobel Peace Prize, which leads to the question: Will he run again?

Katie Couric: Now, that Al Gore’s won an Oscar people are wondering if he’ll use it as a springboard for another presidential run.

Julie Chen: Al Gore says he is not planning on running.

Mike Allen: He”s well known, be able to raise a ton of money, so who thought that you and I would be talking about Al Gore being hot.

RUSH: Yes! It’s a religion. He’s an evangelist! We can call Gore an ‘Oscar-winning evangelist.’ Oh, they’re beside themselves in the Drive-By Media. Now, what must Hillary think when she sees this? They’re not excited with her, and not excited with Obama. Here is a montage of NBC’s Andrea Mitchell and her report on Algore seeking the presidency.

MITCHELL: He could be Hillary Clinton’s worst nightmare by next fall: A Democrat with plenty of star power, years of experience, and access to all the money Silicon Valley and Hollywood can offer. It is the new Al Gore. He is suddenly cool and coy about keeping his options open. Flush with the success of his documentary on climate change, Al Gore is the darling of Hollywood. He is circling the globe, preaching the danger of global warming. He is nominated for a Nobel Prize. What some people may not know is that Al Gore is now on the boards of both Google and Apple, with huge personal wealth and instant access to the richest and most powerful contributors. And since his Academy Award win, traffic on Draft Gore’s website, say his supporters, is at an all-time high.

RUSH: Well, we wait here with bated breath, ladies and gentlemen, to see if Al Gore starts a diet because the Hillary Clinton campaign says that’s what they’re looking at. They’re not going to pay attention to anything else. If he starts losing weight, that’s what they think will be the indication he’s going to get in to the race.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. Good afternoon. I’m just driving my kids around and putting some carbon emissions into the air here. I’m going to go home and plant a tree. I just about spit out my Starbucks when I heard about that Arnold Schwarzenegger registry, carbon emissions registry.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: I had no idea there was such a thing, and I want to know, is global warming going to go the way of such wonderful, important, early-nineties, PC issues like homelessness? I mean, I remember that being a huge issue 15, 20 years ago back when I was in high school and college, and you don’t even hear about it anymore. I’m wondering if the fever pitch —

RUSH: Oh, yes you do. You occasionally hear about it. When Republicans are in the White House, you hear about it. No, it’s not going anywhere sometime soon. They’ve been looking for something they can get years and years, decades and decades of mileage out of. Nothing is going to deter this. The way they have it set up is that no matter what the weather extreme, in whatever time of year, it’s global warming. It’s the climate crisis. It’s something that’s supposedly abnormal. Let me tell you how seductive this is to people. I can remember… I was talking with my brother the other night, chatting back and forth and in e-mail, and I remember when I was playing Little League baseball, maybe Babe Ruth — 12 or 13 years old, and it was July and August, and it was screaming hot, and I remember telling my brother, ‘I think we’re getting closer to the sun. It seems hotter this summer than it was last.’ That’s before anybody put the notion of global warming in my head. People just naturally are inclined to thinking this way.

So now here comes all this so-called scientific research. You have Algore getting an Oscar. Hollywood types and celebrities are always looking for an issue to make them feel relevant and to make them appear solid and concerned and so forth. This is made to order for them. You have the president moderating his tone on this. You have Schwarzenegger going pure liberal on this. There’s a story today that four or five western governors are tired of the federal government’s laziness on this, and they’re going to go ahead and take steps to reduce all these global warming emissions and so forth in their states. It’s going to be around for a while. I’m not going to give up trying to alert people to it. I’m not, by the way, giving up, period. I’m just telling you, it isn’t going to go away. It’s going to be around for a while until something else comes along.

I’ll tell you what’s happening in this, though. The claims are becoming more and more outrageous and unbelievable, and they’re becoming extreme. Like this magazine story in India blaming the US for all of this. This is going to start to reverberate with more people, and there’s starting to be more and more scientists that are popping up and saying this is bogus. So it’s going to remain as an issue that is argued about, but the key is to keep an eye on elected officials to see which way they go on it, because that’s where your taxes get raised. That’s where laws can be written to dampen the improvement of lifestyles or government can grow to fix this so-called problem. Now, this is made to order for big government types. It’s made to order for liberals. It’s a giant fund-raising issue for the wacko environmentalist groups. So it’s gonna be around. Just be skeptical of all of it because it’s a scam.

BREAK TRANSCRIPTRUSH: Roy, welcome to the program.CALLER: Hey, Rush. Global warming optimist dittos from Huntsville.RUSH: Thank you. Huntsville. I once had somebody tell me that there are no rocket scientists in Alabama, somebody who hates the South. I said, “Oh, wrong-o.”CALLER: Oh, well, we love it. We’ve been here for 24 years.RUSH: I’m sure you do. Thanks for the call.CALLER: I wanted to support your gut instinct on this whole global warming thing. You know, the natural greenhouse effect that the earth has is mainly water vapor and clouds, and the weather has almost total control over the greenhouse effect. It adjusts how much water vapor and clouds exist in the atmosphere to keep a relatively constant surface temperature, given a certain amount of incoming sunlight. Now, what I just told you? Most climate scientists haven’t ever thought that way or they wouldn’t agree because they think that the climate is like on a knife edge, that if we push it any little direction, that it’s —RUSH: Of course.CALLER: — going to careen off into a ditch.RUSH: The whole environmental movement is based on the earth’s fragility.CALLER: Right. And what I’ve finally decided after many years of this, researching this issue, and some other scientists — this isn’t my idea — is what mostly controls the temperature of our climate is precipitation systems. And it turns out that that’s the one component of our climate that we understand the least.RUSH: And can’t control! (Laughing.)CALLER: And can’t control.RUSH: And when you throw clouds in the mix, nobody can predict what the cloud cover is going to be and what kind of clouds we’re going to have. Look, Roy, I’m out of time, but I want to talk to you tomorrow about this. I’m going to ask Mr. Snerdley if we can find a way to get in touch with you, because you’re going to be a valuable resource here.

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